Lots more people moving here for work, always hear complaints about the Irish taking constructions jerbs. Pretty sure the largest numbers of people overstaying their visas have been for a long time and remain Brits.

Just curious: do you happen to see a lot of Americans emigrating? I've never encountered more Americans than in the past few years in Australia. It seems like they're coming for work.

No, but the country is so big and vastly different from one place to another that anecdotal evidence means even less than the usual 'nothing'. I don't know anyone personally, primarily because the type of jobs that people would generally go find in places like Australia are not impossible to get here. I mean, if I hang out around PhDs, the job market isn't great in the US, but the US still has more opportunities than pretty much anywhere in the world in science. Thankfully, with our size and the massive public investments we've made in our university system, our research sector has been, and continues to be very strong.

In any case, even in industry, It's not the technical type jobs that are going away, in general. There's still demand for things like that. I mean, if I wanted to go back to being a software engineer full time, I'm confident of finding something within a month at most. But if I had a random degree or my skills were more 'fuzzier' - even something like an MBA (unless it's from a top ten place), it would be much, much harder to land something.

With that said, there could be a historically large percentage of people emigrating, but since its not in the news here, and I don't see it around me, I can't really say. I'm sure there are some official stats that could be found somewhere.

The financial regulators can blame, at least in part, Wall Street lobbyists (along with outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Senate Republicans) for their embarrassing turn at the hearing. Warren would have been on the panel herself representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, instead of a sitting senator, if her nomination to head the agency hadn't been thwarted in 2011.

No, but the country is so big and vastly different from one place to another that anecdotal evidence means even less than the usual 'nothing'. I don't know anyone personally, primarily because the type of jobs that people would generally go find in places like Australia are not impossible to get here. I mean, if I hang out around PhDs, the job market isn't great in the US, but the US still has more opportunities than pretty much anywhere in the world in science. Thankfully, with our size and the massive public investments we've made in our university system, our research sector has been, and continues to be very strong.

In any case, even in industry, It's not the technical type jobs that are going away, in general. There's still demand for things like that. I mean, if I wanted to go back to being a software engineer full time, I'm confident of finding something within a month at most. But if I had a random degree or my skills were more 'fuzzier' - even something like an MBA (unless it's from a top ten place), it would be much, much harder to land something.

With that said, there could be a historically large percentage of people emigrating, but since its not in the news here, and I don't see it around me, I can't really say. I'm sure there are some official stats that could be found somewhere.

Indeed That said, it's more a function of the recent downturn. Just-in-time supply chain ftw

It is not for lack of trying that Republicans are being rebuffed by this fast-growing, though still small, demographic. Republicans in Louisiana and South Carolina nominated Indian Americans to be their party’s respective gubernatorial nominees, and after both candidates won they were nationally showcased. At the cabinet level, add Elaine Chao, who served for eight years as W’s Labor secretary and is the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

From a policy perspective, the Republicans have been more welcoming to Asians than to other immigrants. During the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney supported increased immigration by skilled workers (read: Asians), despite demanding “self-deportation” for nondocumented aliens (read: Latinos). Republican rising star Marco Rubio, together with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons and Republican Orrin Hatch, recently sponsored legislation to increase the number of H1-B visas granted to educated and skilled employees. Asian immigrants hold more than two in five of the H1-B high-skill visas presently issued.

The GOP’s appeal has gone beyond tokenism, yet its pitch has lacked purchase. Asian-Americans are no longer buying what the GOP is selling. Why the buyers’ remorse?

These days, the GOP strikes Asian-Americans, along with many other Americans, as hostile to science and modernity. For example, George W. Bush severely restricted the use of federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research and cast his very first presidential veto to block enactment of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. More recently, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia—a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and a prospective Senate candidate—declared that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang were lies that emanated from the pit of Hell. Apparently, a low-taxes-only agenda is no longer enough to woo a demographic whose median household income exceeds $90,000 by the time that they become third-generation Americans.

And there is a further rub. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Asian immigrants hold at least a college degree—compared with less than one in three members of the overall adult population. At Cal Tech—where race, ethnicity, and legacy status are excluded from admissions criteria—Asian-Americans comprise nearly 40 percent of the student body. At MIT, which professes a commitment to diversity, Asian-Americans comprise more than a quarter of students.

What’s more, Asian-American students tend to concentrate in the STEM jobs—sciences, technology, mathematics, and engineering—that are crucial to our economy. Thus, in a sense, Asian-Americans are not just another ethnic group waiting for a politician to march in a parade, eat some exotic food, and then announce a community grant or shill for votes. Rather, they are also a subset of high-tech America, and one thing is clear: high-tech America is not in love with the Republican Party.

More from STRATFOR. This time on drones and a slightly unorthodox (for here) - if hardly ground-breaking - take on the problems surrounding drone warfare.

The United States has engaged an enemy that is dispersed across the globe. If the strategy is to go wherever the enemy is, then the war is limitless. It is also endless. The power of the jihadist movement is that it is diffuse. It does not need vast armies to be successful. Therefore, the destruction of some of its units will always result in their replacement. Quality might decline for a while but eventually will recover.

The enemy strategy is to draw the United States into an extended conflict that validates its narrative that the United States is permanently at war with Islam. It wants to force the United States to engage in as many countries as possible. From the U.S. point of view, unmanned aerial vehicles are the perfect weapon because they can attack the jihadist command structure without risk to ground forces. From the jihadist point of view as well, unmanned aerial vehicles are the perfect weapon because their efficiency allows the jihadists to lure the United States into other countries and, with sufficient manipulation, can increase the number of innocents who are killed.

In this sort of war, the problem of killing innocents is practical. It undermines the strategic effort. The argument that it is illegal is dubious, and to my mind, so is the argument that it is immoral. The argument that it is ineffective in achieving U.S. strategic goals of eliminating the threat of terrorist actions by jihadists is my point.

Unmanned aerial vehicles provide a highly efficient way to destroy key enemy targets with very little risk to personnel. But they also allow the enemy to draw the United States into additional theaters of operation because the means is so efficient and low cost. However, in the jihadists' estimate, the political cost to the United States is substantial. The broader the engagement, the greater the perception of U.S. hostility to Islam, the easier the recruitment until the jihadist forces reach a size that can't be dealt with by isolated airstrikes.

In warfare, enemies will try to get you to strike at what they least mind losing. The case against strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles is not that they are ineffective against specific targets but that the targets are not as vital as the United States thinks. The United States believes that the destruction of the leadership is the most efficient way to destroy the threat of the jihadist movement. In fact it only mitigates the threat while new leadership emerges. The strength of the jihadist movement is that it is global, sparse and dispersed. It does not provide a target whose destruction weakens the movement. However, the jihadist movement's weakness derives from its strength: It is limited in what it can do and where.

The problem of unmanned aerial vehicles is that they are so effective from the U.S. point of view that they have become the weapon of first resort. Thus, the United States is being drawn into operations in new areas with what appears to be little cost. In the long run, it is not clear that the cost is so little. A military strategy to defeat the jihadists is impossible. At its root, the real struggle against the jihadists is ideological, and that struggle simply cannot be won with Hellfire missiles. A strategy of mitigation using airstrikes is possible, but such a campaign must not become geographically limitless. Unmanned aerial vehicles lead to geographical limitlessness. That is their charm; that is their danger.
- See more at: Hellfire, Morality and Strategy | Stratfor

Not gonna say if I agree/disagree, worth a think either way. Bolded bits are the parts I found most interesting.